


Take These Broken Wings

by gently_mad



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 16:17:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10643526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gently_mad/pseuds/gently_mad
Summary: Somewhere in a different life, Booker learns to be a father...





	

 

Booker knows he’s a bad father.

He doesn’t need the women gossiping in the hallway of the tenement building to tell him that. They sit on the stairs, they knit or crochet or nurse babies. They whisper and pass judgement among themselves. The whispering stops when he stands unsteadily in front of Mrs. McCollum’s door and knocks. They can see him swaying. They can smell the liquor from where they sit. He knows he’s drunk and he knows what they think and he doesn’t care.

The door opens.

-Mr. Dewitt, ah…Y’know the wee one can stay with me to-night, it’s alright. Sure, doesn’t little Mary love being mamma to her and all…

He takes the sleeping Anna from the woman’s arms. He stares down at the child, cradles her clumsily against his chest and turns away.

-We’ll be fine.

The gossip follows him down the hall, mincing and sneering alongside his uneven steps and he pretends he’s too drunk to notice.

It’s a flat like many in the tenement building: small and claustrophobic with damp washing down the walls. He finds her cradle. He lays her down, steadies himself against the wall and drops down in the nearby chair. He reaches up for the little mechanical bird sitting on its shelf, because Anna loves its tinny musical warble and it helps her go to sleep. Then he remembers that the bird is in the pawn shop, has been so for the past six months and Anna is already asleep. He breathes out, a long whistling sigh and thoughts wave blindly through the alcohol-saturated depths of his mind, trying to find each other:  _ ha, I’ll be…selling…at the pawn shop…be selling Anna…Anna’s cradle…next. _

His forehead lowers against the peeling wallpaper with a soft thump and he’s asleep also.

***

Booker has nightmares because a man with blood on his hands can never silence the screaming in his own head.

_ He dreams that he stumbles through his office and it is engulfed in flames and the shrieks of the dying. He jerks open the door to Anna’s room, clutches the side of Anna’s cradle and it is so still. He rips through the sheets and sees his Mauser-C96. _

_ The water surges up around his feet, his legs, his body. He is drowning, drowning and a young woman who is and is not Anna forces him further under the water and down into the darkness of salvation. His pistol is in his hand as he watches the bubbles trail up and away from his nose and mouth. He is full of rage because, by God if he’s going to die anyways it’ll be on his own terms. _

_ He jams the muzzle under his jaw before the soldier in him can argue the absurdity of firing a gun under water. There’s no logic here, while falling backwards into the recesses of a nightmare that won’t end when he wakes up. The gun fires anyways. _

_ bang. _

He wakes up, sprawled on the floor near the table, the chair turned over and the smell of smoke in the air. He curses, jumps up, grabs the pan of smoldering eggs off the stove and flings it into the nearby sink with particular savagery. He pumps the faucet and the rust-colored water spurts out and dissolves into steam.

That’s what a man gets when he finds work with long hours and meager pay; a burnt breakfast. He slides up the window and fans the smoke outside. He opens Anna’s door, goes in to check on her. The cradle is empty.

For a second, he almost chokes on the bile of self-hatred that rises in his throat:  _ how could you, what kind of pathetic bastard can sell his own child _ , before he realizes with a start that those thoughts are strangers to him, alien thoughts encroaching on his mind from some other reality.

_ Time skips. _

In the next instant, it is all forgotten but he remembers that Anna fell asleep on his bed. He finds her there, curled up around her toys and sucking her thumb, her dark hair parted into two small and badly-done braids, peacefully oblivious to her father’s noise in the kitchen.

He sits next to her, reaches out a hand and very gently rests it on her head. She frowns in her sleep but does not wake up. He wonders where the past three years went and leans back against the bedpost and closes his eyes.

***

A wounded man stops bleeding eventually and he must either die or live with scars. Booker wants to hope that his days of drinking and gambling are behind him. He wants to believe that epiphanies happen, that there is one moment in a man’s life where he opens his eyes and sees himself in the gutter and realizes he has to get out and stay out.

Booker is wrong. Loving someone beyond your own heart’s limits isn’t always enough to quiet demons.

_ Impaled on a drill, he floats above a shining underwater city of garish lights, glass and brass fixtures. He watches his own blood blossom outwards from his chest and drift lazily down like ink through the water. Somewhere music is playing, cheerful and upbeat, but he doesn’t recognize the tune. _

He opens his eyes once and moves the damp washcloth back. He sees the lights pulsing, and the pain throbs white around the corners of his vision. His mouth feels dry and Anna is somewhere nearby, talking quietly to him. He wonders if he had been in an accident at the dry goods warehouse and then he remembers last evening at the bars: a night of shaken dice and spread-eagle cards, false laughter, the red gashes of flattering lips and liquor that flowed like the ocean around him and drowned his resistance. He licks his lips and his voice is harsh, croaking like a toad in muck.

-Anna…I’m sorry…

She’s silent for a moment. Then as if he hadn’t spoken, she slides the cloth back over his eyes and continues talking. He drifts off again, borne into half-dreams by her voice and doesn’t awaken again until the evening. She brings him some concoction that burns as he drinks it, and the smell of bacon is in the air. He regrets that she knows how to make this slop he gulps down. She’s only eight, but she watches him with eyes that are too old and wary for a child’s face.

He clears his throat and rubs his forehead before he finally speaks, his voice apologetic and low with shame.

-Songbird…will you read me that book again?

-What book, pappa?

-The book…you know. The story you were telling me. About the hero with the arm of silver, the arm that could make him fly. He uh…He drank magic potions and he was searching for a child-queen in a floating city?

She’s very quiet and rubs her arm bashfully before she answers him.

-It…it wasn’t a book, pappa. It was just a silly story I made up.

His chest and his head aches so much. He thinks a moment and then takes her hands, covers them with his own and gives them an awkward little pat.

-It’s not silly at all. Tell me more. Please?

She smiles then, an uncertain smile and he learns that it’s a story she’s been writing for a while. She’s saved bits and scraps of paper, sewn them together, drew pictures. It started with a dream, she tells him, a beautiful dream and he was the hero with the arm of silver and she was the child-queen trapped in a tower shaped like an angel.

Something tightens in his throat as he flips through the homemade book.

-I could see you as a queen, Songbird, but I think I’d make a piss-poor hero.

Anna laughs and tells him he shouldn’t say naughty words. She sits down on the bed beside him, curls her arm up under his and continues to talk as she points to the pictures. He leans over and kisses the top of her head and closes his eyes as he listens.

***

-Pappa, you’re daydreaming again! Wake up. You haven’t heard a word I said.

Booker looks down at the indignant young lady on his arm. She adjusts her hat and sulks with him. He attempts to placate her as they walk down the city street on this slightly overcast Sunday afternoon.

-I’m listening, I’m listening. You were telling me about uhhh…Johnny?

-No, William!

-Of course. I meant William.

There’s too many Williams and Johnnies to keep up with lately, especially with only three weeks’ worth of sobriety behind him. This isn’t the beau that’s been hounding her, it’s some other young schmuck at the university who tried to show her up in mathematics class. A stuffed shirt, by the sound of it. Booker tells her in so many words that young women in higher education are still a novelty to some people even now in 1912, and all young men are jackasses and should be ignored.

-Well I wouldn’t have thought more of it, Pappa but the professor had the nerve to side with him even when I stood up in class and pointed out how wrong the equation was! He said I was clearly becoming emotional and I might want to reconsider taking math next semester as it might be too much for my delicate sensibilities.

Booker processes this information with a thoughtful expression on his face. There’s a crowd ahead of them on the street corner and a man shouting and gesticulating in the center of it but he pays it very little attention. Nowadays, everyone is shouting on street corners and it’s either politics or sports.

-So. Should I go and punch this professor in his teeth?

He deadpans better than a vaudeville act. It’s amusing how her brows furrow and her mouth purses as she seriously considers the offer for a minute. He’s more pleased however when she tells him no, because he wouldn’t want her to take too much after her old man.

The crowd blocks nearly the entire sidewalk. Booker stops and listens for an idle moment. The man is a street preacher, warning against Providence’s wrath and man’s pride and the end of all things. Passers-by occasionally toss a coin into the hat at his feet and Booker slips his arm gently out of Anna’s grasp for a moment, fishing around his pocket to find a coin to drop in the hat and buy off God.

Anna says something to him and he nods, only half-paying attention. He thinks to himself: _ any huckster could call himself a preacher and make ten times the earnings a fellow’d get packing sardines in a barrel. Maybe I’m in the wrong line of work. _ The coin clinks in the hat and he turns to ask Anna something.

She is gone.

Booker looks around in growing alarm. He moves past the crowd, looking for Anna. She’s nowhere to be seen and he tries his best to swallow denial, telling himself that it isn’t the same old nightmare playing itself out right here on the streets of New York.

_ An empty cradle, an empty bottle and fists pounding on the door… _

_ Time skips again. _

She’s there ahead of him; running, always running away and who could blame her? He runs after her, dammit he’s trying to apologize! Why won’t she listen? Why can’t she believe he’ll do better, why can’t she see…

_ …that I am so…so sorry… _

**_ELIZABETH!_ **

-Pappa! Who on earth are you calling for?

Booker swivels on his heel and sees Anna under the portico of a little boarded-up cafe, peering out at him in the pouring rain. When did it start raining?

-Pappa?

He reaches her in a couple of frantic bounds and grabs her by the shoulder. Breathing in great gasping pants, he leans down and glares white-eyed at her.

-Dammit, Anna! Don’t you do that! Don’t you EVER do that again!

She tries to pull away from him, her eyes widening in confusion. He is shaking so badly that his hand is making her shoulder tremble. He can’t seem to catch his breath and suddenly his gasping  dissolves into strangled sobs. He releases her shoulder, he steps back in the rain and his hands clench his face as his whole body heaves and shakes.

After a moment, he feels Anna’s arms slide around him. He pulls her towards him, clutching her fiercely, a drowning man trying his best to hold on to what might save his life.

-please…forgive…me…

She guides them both out of the rain, under shelter. Her voice is so low he can barely hear it above the spatter of water on the sidewalk.

-I never stopped forgiving you…

Later when Booker is calm, they sit together under the portico and watch the rain coming down and they talk. He asks her about everything he had missed while he had been in the sanitorium and Anna grows quiet and only says she’s been fine.

-They looked after you up at the college right? They didn’t treat you like shit or give you a hard time or anything? Because you’re as good and smart as any of them and I’m not gonna have my kid treated shabby for her old man being a souse…

-Pappa, don’t. Really.

She reaches across the table to take his hands and she tries to smile.

-I was fine. Don’t worry.

He realizes he’s being an idiot and making her uncomfortable, so he changes the subject and asks about her studies instead and her friends and whatshisname, and he enjoys seeing her face light up again as she relaxes and talks. Finally he asks why in the world she ran off like that.

-Well, I saw someone waving at me across the street. I thought it was another student I knew from college.

She folds her arms and gives him a reproachful look.

-I told you I was going to go over and say hello. You weren’t listening.

-Allright, fine. So who was it?

She shrugs and opens her purse, looking through it as she talks.

-Rosalind-something? She has a brother, twins you know. They said they were friends of yours and we walked and chatted a bit until we came here. She gave me this.

She pulls out a little mechanical bird and sets it on the table. They both lean their heads down and squint curiously at it. Then Booker picks it up and turns it around.

-This…well, my God. It’s your bird from when you were a baby.

-Oh it can’t be. You lost that thing years ago.

Booker frowns at her as he winds it up and it begins warbling. It’s not the tune he remembers and he shakes his head as he hands it back to Anna

-Maybe you’re right. I just…well damned if it doesn’t look like the same one. Look, Songbird, you know you’ve got to be more careful, you can’t just run off like that especially on these streets. That woman had to be lying, I don’t know anyone named Rosalind and I sure as hell…

She’s humming happily as she holds the little bird to her ear and he trails off. She turns it over.

-There’s the tune name on the bottom. ‘ La vie en rose ‘

-La who in what?

Anna rests her chin on her hand and smiles at him. She makes circles around her eyes with her fingers.

-Life in pink. In other words looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. It’s French.

-When did you learn French?

As it turns out, she’s taken two semesters of it and she loves it. She wants to go to Paris someday, beautiful Paris, city of light and splendor and romance. She wants to live the life of the  _ haute bohème _ , to be a writer, traveling around the globe, lounging about in literary circles and salons, drinking champagne, world-famous. She stretches out her arms and lifts them up dramatically as she speaks. She wants to be infinite, Pappa, as infinite as the stars in the sky.

The rain stops. He asks if for the time being she wants ice cream. He can at least get that for her, although he doesn’t say that out loud. She has dreams bigger than herself and they lift her up further than he can see. He won’t be the weights that drag them down.

They walk down the sidewalk towards the ice cream parlour. Booker can feel them lurking in his shadow that stretches out behind him: monsters with exposed hearts, madmen wearing the masks of heroes, demons in the guise of angels that will never go away. Today, though, they will be silent. Today life is rosy and he’s alright with being the hero that buys Anna an ice cream cone.

He looks up, up towards the sky and so does Anna, and they both dream of flying.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
